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Friday, May 29, 2009

PARLIAMENT - RED HOT MAMA

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, here's a very brief recap...

George Clinton began his group of slick doo wop vocalists as the Parliaments in the late '50's, eventually morphing into an incredible Detroit soul band that hit big with "Testify" in 1967, and released some other incredible singles along the way (a few of which have been featured here). Around 1968, Clinton somehow lost rights to the the name "Parliaments", just around the time things were getting very FREAKY and hence the birth of Funkadelic (the same singers and more or less the same musicians who played in the latter day Parliaments). In 1970, George somehow got the rights to the name back, and released an LP (Osmium) as Parliament (no "s" this time) and a few singles.

This track (later recut by Funkadelic) features some of the most raw vocals and ripping fuzz guitar (genius guitarist Eddie Hazel) every cut by the P Funk gang (and that's quite a feat!).

The single and album didn't sell, and the Parliament name was retired until 1974, where George used the Parliament moniker to explore a more commercial (but never boring) brand of sci-fi funk.

1 comment:

Hey ya'll... first off, SICK BLOG! I'm *so* psyched I found this place.

This jam is super-close to my heart so I figured I'd take the opportunity to say hi and send over virtual hi-fives.

I dropped the reissue version of this song over on thebrobots.comSounds like they did a fair amount of remixing (guess it could be an entirely different recording?). It's funny to hear the differences... I suppose chopping off the fuzz avalanche at the beginning makes sense for a single.